The market. I don't get it.

[Nixxe]

On top of that, I can only have 20 auctions up at once? Or 40 with the 2 retainers I guess, but even then, why the limit? That doesn't make sense to me at all.
I mean, it literally makes me not want to take a crafting class since my enjoyment of crafting ties into the ability to make money on it.

And to be honest, with a 40 item limit I am kind of surprised the community hasn't settled in on 40 items that sell and that is all we would find on the market at all.

I don't know, I am confused as heck by the market in the game.

So in World of Warcraft, once I hit a certain (and relatively low) threshold of gold, I was basically able to use the addon TradeSkillMaster and my oodles of free capital to move in on whatever market I wanted and take it over without having to give up on any other markets. I couldn't completely own it because people were willing to throw their time away farming mats as if that makes decent gold, but pretty much I could guarantee I was the one getting the most out of the market and part of that was making sure I deliberately did things to reduce what other people could get out of it. It wasn't just competition, but salting the earth behind me every morning. In FFXIV, while I don't have the gil to do that anyway right now, I'd be prevented from doing that by the cap on retainers. Since I can only have 40 auctions up at a time and not literally thousands, I have to choose a few things that will be the best use of my slot and go with those, rather than simply taking over everything because I can. I have to imagine that's the basic idea behind the limitation.

Also, basic economic forces keep people from simply selling 40 items max, namely competition. There is not unlimited demand. If everyone attempted to sell the same thing, the market would quickly be beyond saturated and prices would crash. Naturally that would discourage people from selling that thing, while some other thing would be relatively expensive, and they'd move on to that. Over time, we see people disperse to selling a great many things based on their own resources and preferences. This is a very basic idea of it, but it's essentially the fundamentals of economy and specialization.

[BigRed5392]

Auction house =/= Market board.

auction bids are not the same thing, as just buying things from a block of wood. (joke)

so that partly why WoW market is different, people would need to bid on items which can increase the price. Or pay the buy out which in some cases be higher then the bid as a convenience fee.

all we do is walk up to the MB and buy it. no bidding so prices rise and fall, based on basic supply and demand.

[Nixxe]

Auction house =/= Market board.

auction bids are not the same thing, as just buying things from a block of wood. (joke)

so that partly why WoW market is different, people would need to bid on items which can increase the price. Or pay the buy out which in some cases be higher then the bid as a convenience fee.

all we do is walk up to the MB and buy it. no bidding so prices rise and fall, based on basic supply and demand.

You don't seem too familiar with WoW or the AH. For all intents and purposes the basic functioning of the AH and the MB are nearly the same. While there is a bid price, it's pretty rare for people to put things up without a buyout or for people to actually bid on things as a way of obtaining items for any purpose other than resell. The buyout is the de facto price tag and it's set in very much the same way you'd choose your price in FFXIV, which is to say it's the market price if you have any intention of actually selling it. All people do in WoW is walk up to the AH and buy it. No bidding. They don't even have to pay taxes on it. Regardless, even if it had a purely bid economy, supply and demand would still govern pricing. It would simply be more responsive to small fluctuations in either.